Last night, I was lucky enough to catch a performance that I've been hearing a lot about from my friends on the college-tour circuit: Dan Deacon + Jimmy Joe Roche's Ultimate Reality. I have to say, Deacon and Roche's little art project was true to its name: it was so much cooler than real life that I fancifully imagined the Wham City crew as inhabitants of a parallel reality all their own -- one, of course, full of acid, Casio keyboards, and Schwarzenegger DVDs.

Verily I say unto thee: it takes a real party monster to incite a full-on dance riot with little more than two brain-rattling drummers and some wacky electro-glitch effects. But that "little more" is exactly what cranks Deacon's soundtrack up to "religious experience" territory: Roche's psychedelic video mash-up of Governator movie clips, woven together to tell an all-new (Deacon-narrated) story of creation, loss, artistic freedom, and the inevitable mechanical Rapture of the near future. Nothing quite says "Dance, dance to Armageddon!" quite like a four-headed blue-and-yellow Ah-nuld.

Though the music was not quite as manic and powerful as the other two Dan Deacon shows I've seen, the overall experience of being a spectator at such a hilariously unpretentious piece of "performance art" was INCREDIBLE. I highly (har har) recommend it.  You can even buy the DVD here and stage your own dance party / screening.